Facebook founder is Time magazine's Person of the Year

Mark Zuckerberg has edged out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Tea Party
and the Chilean miners to become Time magazine's person of the year.

7:01PM GMT 15 Dec 2010

Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has set the media agenda in recent weeks with the publication of secret US diplomatic cables, topped a reader's poll on the Time website but lost out in the final ranking, which is determined by the magazine's editors.

The decision to hand the annual honour to 26-year-old Zuckerberg, who launched Facebook in 2004, will be seen as a reaction to the growing hostility to Assange in the US.

The WikiLeaks founder is facing extradition from Britain to Sweden on rape charges, and leading American right-wingers have called for his execution.